MORGAN HILL — Threatened with a lawsuit from Latino residents over voting rights, the Morgan Hill Unified School District board has decided to switch to district elections.

The board on Tuesday directed Superintendent Steve Betando to hire a demographer to draw up proposed boundary lines for seven trustee areas.

The idea is to have those electoral areas in place by November 2016, when three trustee seats will be up for election, board President Bob Benevento said.

“Different groups in the community really don’t stand a chance when it comes to elections,” said Armando Benavides, a leader of a group of the Community Advocacy Coalition Morgan Hill, a group that alleges the district has failed to adequately represent Latinos and other minorities. Nearly half of Morgan Hill’s students are Latino, but only one Latino sits on the board. In a letter and a meeting with Betando, the group made it clear, Benavides said, that it was considering a lawsuit based on the California Voting Rights Act.

Supporters of the move believe minority candidates would stand a better chance at winning a seat through district elections rather than the current system where the candidates run districtwide. They say some of the trustee areas will have a concentration of minority voters and it will cost less to run in those elections.

For several years, Latino parents in Morgan Hill have pressed for better education for their children. “On several issues that pertain to Laintos, they have repeatedly refused to help,” said Julian Mancias, another coalition leader. Parents have asked the district to hire more Latino teachers and principals, to consider at least one Latino candidate when hiring a superintendent, and to approve charter schools. Requests have been refused, he said. “Every time we go up to the board, we get escorted to the door.”

On district elections, he told the board, “if you do not comply with our demand, you will be challenging the state of California Voting Rights Act.”

No school district, city or county has prevailed against a challenge under that act, passed in 2003, said Morris Baller, of the Oakland firm Goldstein Borgen Dardarian & Ho, the coalition’s attorney. Most recently, voters in Los Banos passed a ballot measure establishing district elections — in response to a letter presented by a sister group of the Morgan Hill coalition.

Historically, Morgan Hill has had few or no Latinos on its school board. Claudia Rossi, from Colombia, served from 2010 to 2012, and Rick Badillo is midway through a term. Before that, observers say they cannot recall a Latino on the board. In November, three Latino candidates ran unsuccessfully for the board.

Benevento, the board president, defended the district record in educating children.

“This board has been extremely interested and involved in supporting all members of community, especially minority and underserved members,” he said. He pointed out magnet schools designed to improve education and a popular Spanish immersion program.

Spanning more than 300 square miles, Morgan Hill Unified covers more territory than any other school district in Santa Clara County. It runs 30 bus routes to serve children from South San Jose to San Martin, and the Stanislaus County border in the Diablo Range to the Santa Cruz Mountains — varied communities of differing density.

“Clearly it presents a lot of interesting dynamics when it comes to creating maps” of districts in which candidates will run, Betando said.

The maps also are likely to force some incumbents to run against each other to retain their seats. The seven school board members live in Morgan Hill, several in the same neighborhood; no one lives in the far-flung rural areas.

Sharon Noguchi covers preschool through high school for the Bay Area News Group. She's written about teen stress, high-school cheating, Common Core and teacher tenure. She also runs workshops aimed at developing high school journalists.

http://www.newsaddup.com/socal-law-firm-targets-first-bay-area-school-district-over-race-bias-in-elections/ SoCal law firm targets first Bay Area school district over race bias in elections - NewsAddUp

[…] threat by Shenkman. Santa Rosa City School District also received a similar letter last week. Morgan Hill Unified decided to switch to district elections after a lawsuit threat from Latino residents over voting […]

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